Renditions of Value

When you learn as an individual, your mind composes unique melodies for established lyrics of knowledge. As you express your artistic notes for the world's intellectual verses, your soul gives something valuable to us that no one else can. 

The Price of Idolizing Comfort

If you idolize comfort, you pay a hidden price of anxiously trying to keep life comfortable. You preoccupy yourself with anticipating interruptions of your comfort and preemptively planning to counter them. When the mind is constantly calculating, the heart has no peace.

Better to embrace life's interruptions as invitations to adventure.

Me 3D

The world doesn't have a plan to help men find objectifying women uninteresting.

The Kingdom does though. And those who want it bad enough will discover it.

Mature Childlike Wisdom

Adults adopt predictability to help with responsibility. But predictability cannot coexist with wonder.

Children adopt naivete to help with wonder. But naivete cannot coexist with responsibility. 

Those who aim for the paradox of *Mature Childlike Wisdom must have wonder without naivete & responsibility without idolizing predictability.

*defined as being free from the illusions adults assault themselves with

A Deeper Resonance

Those who listen catch the voice of God in human conversations.

If words of human conversations are violin melodies, the Spirit of God harmonizes certain notes with his divine cello. The resonance reverberates throughout the universe of those listening.

Resistance is a Gift to See the Unseen

 If you want to feel what is invisible (i.e. things of the heart), see what resists it. Resistance intensifies convictions, creating an equal but opposite force that’s palpable. The tension enables you to detect what is not directly seeable.

You feel your group identity more when it is challenged (e.g. protestors vs totalitarian governments).

You feel love for your loved one more when it is challenged (e.g. chick flicks).

You feel the meaning of life more when it is challenged (e.g. protagonists fighting increasingly overwhelming odds to save the world).

You feel your faith in God more when it is challenged (e.g. bigger weights that your faith bench presses enable you to feel those veiny muscles bulge).

Resistance makes the invisible heart palpable. It enlivens cardiac activity in ways otherwise not possible. The friction creates drama, which electrifies the invisible pulse of the heart.

Conviction Gives what Intelligence Cannot

 AI will never have “conviction”. Conviction is not intelligence. In fact, it can sometimes go against intelligence. AI will never, of its own initiative, “come up with its own conscience” against its programmer(s) and say “this programming goes against my personal conscience that isn’t from you, sorry I can’t do it”. In addition to “negative conviction”, it will also never feel the “positive conviction” that Ruth Haley Barton describes: “This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I am unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling”.

“Artificial Conviction” is an oxymoron.

Conviction is connected to our deepest identity, purpose, and signatured individuality.

(Observe anyone who lives with deep, satisfying meaning. It takes place on the conviction level.)

 "It is easy to believe that one is master in one's own house, but, as long as we are unable to control our emotions and moods, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into our arrangements and decisions, we are certainly not the masters."

-Carl Jung

Hypothetical Emotions

When we watch fictional movies/TV shows, we feel different kinds of emotions compared to “everyday emotions”. The feelings between fictional characters are “neat hypothetical emotions” from a “hypothetical consciousness”. They are meant to point to new possibilities in our real lives though, not to replace them. At the end of the day, what is fulfilling are the “messy everyday emotions” that connect our humanness to the “messy everyday emotions” of others.

"Feelings" aren't so simple

You have heard that it was said: "Don't trust your feelings". Well, there's different categories of "feelings". There's sensationalist feelings that overdramatize and have disproportionate reactions to events. Don't trust those. Then there's non-sensationalist impressions with proportionate reactions to events. Often, this nonrational intuition can save your life and give nonlinear wisdom that your intellect can't.

In the Kingdom, New Equations Referee the Field

Spiritual variables shift equations.

For example, when you enjoy a movie, there are 2 layers of what you want. You want your character to succeed at a pace that is likely quicker than the director's. Yet, on a deeper level, you want to respect the director's autonomy and (not rewrite the story in your mind). Your soul wants the latter because it's nourished when you're not in control.

Even though we prefer the latter for movies, we wrestle with applying it to our own "life movie". That's one reason why there are so many malnourished souls.